Don’t Shoot! I’m Che!

'Don't Shoot! I'm Che!'
October 9, 2012 By Humberto Fontova

Forty-five years ago this week, Ernesto "Che" Guevara got a major dose
of his own medicine. Without trial he was declared a murderer, stood
against a wall and shot. If the saying "What goes around comes around"
ever fit, it's here.

"When you saw the beaming look on Che's face as his victims were tied to
the stake and blasted apart by the firing squad," said a former Cuban
political prisoner to this writer, "you saw there was something
seriously, seriously wrong with Che Guevara."

As commander of the La Cabana execution yard, Che often shattered the
skull of the condemned man (or boy) by firing the coup de grâce himself.
When other duties tore him away from his beloved execution yard, he
consoled himself by viewing the slaughter. Che's second-story office in
La Cabana had a section of wall torn out so he could watch his darling
firing-squads at work.

A Rumanian journalist named Stefan Bacie visited Cuba in early 1959 and
was fortunate enough to get an audience with the already quasi-famous
"Che" Guevara. Upon entering Castro's chief executioner's office, Bacie
noticed Che motioning him over to the office's newly constructed window.
Bacie got there just in time to hear the command of FUEGO! hear the
blast from the firing squad and see a condemned prisoner crumple and
convulse.

The stricken journalist immediately left and composed a poem titled "I
No Longer Sing of Che." ("I no longer sing of Che any more than I would
of Stalin," go the first lines.)

Even as a youth, Ernesto Guevara's writings revealed a serious mental
illness. "My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder
and blood. Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering
any vencido that falls in my hands! With the deaths of my enemies I
prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant
proletariat with a bestial howl!" This passage is from Ernesto Guevara's
famous Motorcycle Diaries, though Robert Redford somehow overlooked it
while producing his heart-warming movie.

The Spanish word vencido, by the way, translates into "defeated" or
"surrendered." And indeed, the "acrid odor of gunpowder and blood" very,
very rarely reached Guevara's nostrils from anything properly
describable as combat. It mostly came from the close-range murders of
unarmed and defenseless men (and boys). Carlos Machado was 15 years old
in 1963 when the bullets from the firing squad shattered his body. His
twin brother and father collapsed beside Carlos from the same volley.
All had resisted Castro and Che's theft of their humble family farm, all
refused blindfolds and all died sneering at their Communist murderers,
as did thousands of their valiant countrymen. "'Viva Cuba Libre! Viva
Cristo Rey! Abajo Comunismo!' The defiant yells would make the walls of
La Cabana prison tremble," wrote eyewitness to the slaughter, Armando
Valladares.

The one genuine accomplishment in Che Guevara's life was the mass-murder
of defenseless men and boys. Under his own gun dozens died. Under his
orders thousands crumpled. At everything else Che Guevara failed
abysmally, even comically.

During his Bolivian "guerrilla" campaign, Che split his forces whereupon
they got hopelessly lost and bumbled around, half-starved, half-clothed
and half-shod, without any contact with each other for 6 months before
being wiped out. They didn't even have WWII vintage walkie-talkies to
communicate and seemed incapable of applying a compass reading to a map.
They spent much of the time walking in circles and were usually within a
mile of each other. During this blundering they often engaged in
ferocious firefights against each other.

"You hate to laugh at anything associated with Che, who murdered so
many," says Felix Rodriguez, the Cuban-American CIA officer who played a
key role in tracking him down in Bolivia. "But when it comes to Che as
'guerrilla' you simply can't help but guffaw."

So for many, the questions remains: how did such an incurable doofus,
sadist and epic idiot attain such iconic status?

The answer is that this psychotic and thoroughly unimposing vagrant
named Ernesto Guevara de la Serna y Lynch had the magnificent fortune of
linking up with modern history's top press agent, Fidel Castro, who —
from the New York Times' Herbert Matthews in 1957, through CBS's Ed
Murrow in 1959 to CBS's Dan Rather, to ABC's Barbara Walters, to NBC's
Andrea Mitchell more recently — always had the mainstream media
anxiously scurrying to his every beck and call and eating out of his
hand like trained pigeons.

Had Ernesto Guevara not linked up with Raul and Fidel Castro in Mexico
city that fateful summer of 1955 — had he not linked up with a Cuban
exile named Nico Lopez in Guatemala the year before who later introduced
him to Raul and Fidel Castro in Mexico City — everything points to
Ernesto continuing his life of a traveling hobo, panhandling, mooching
off women, staying in flophouses and scribbling unreadable poetry.

Che's image is particularly ubiquitous on college campuses. But in the
wrong places. He belongs in the marketing, PR and advertising
departments. His lessons and history are fascinating and valuable, but
only in light of P.T. Barnum. One born every minute, Mr. Barnum? If only
you'd lived to see the Che phenomenon. Actually, ten are born every second.

His pathetic whimpering while dropping his fully-loaded weapons as two
Bolivian soldiers approached him on Oct. 8 1967 ("Don't shoot! I'm Che!
I'm worth more to you alive than dead!") proves that this cowardly,
murdering swine was unfit to carry his victims' slop buckets.

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